'From The Inside Out' With Nancy Saltzman
Nancy discussed with us the value of law firm experience and what she looks for when working with outside counsel.
The following is a summary and highlights of Part 3 of our podcast series “From the Inside Out,” bringing non-obvious insights from in-house legal departments to law firms and other lawyers on the outside. “From the Inside Out” is hosted by Ian Connett of Evolve the Law and sponsored by Lake Whillans, a commercial litigation finance firm with offices in California and New York.
In our third installment, we sat down with Nancy Saltzman, the former Executive Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary of EXL Service, an operations management and analytics company based in New York. Nancy discussed with us the value of law firm experience and what she looks for when working with outside counsel.
Nancy has more than 20 years experience advising large global organizations in complex economic and regulatory environments. She has deep experience in healthcare, insurance, and technology, as well as subject matter expertise in data analytics, robotics process automation, data privacy, and cybersecurity.
Nancy was one of eight members of the executive committee at EXL, which has 27,000 employees globally. The committee’s role is to take stock of where the company is, what its market potential is, where they need to be, and what their investors and the analysts who follow their stock are expecting, and devise a strategy for the company looking at both short- and long-term objectives. EXL handles what they call “business as usual” or “nuts and bolts” legal work in-house, while turning to outside counsel for less-frequent or more high-stakes matters like large litigations, large M&A deals, or legal matters involving employees in states where they have no state law expert.
How did your significant law firm experience prepare you for your career?
Law firm experience is a fantastic training ground — the volume and complexity of transactions and the senior mentorship are second to none. It’s a demanding environment, but you get an enormous amount of education and exposure to the best and brightest minds and the most interesting transaction types in a very short amount of time. It’s a great starting point and there’s no substitute for that kind of training.
Do you look for law firm experience when you’re hiring?
Not all countries have the same path through law school and law firms for training, but in the U.S., we absolutely look for law firm experience and won’t hire anyone with less than three, or ideally five, years of experience. We don’t have the time and energy to train someone from day one on the most basic tenets of legal work.
What’s one thing that law firms just don’t understand about the in-house world?
For the most part, firms don’t understand the incredible demand on budget. It’s more obvious on large transactions, but less so on smaller matters that can meander with no clear end. Law firms tend to be too theoretical and don’t stop to realize that all of that is costing the client time and money. Winning isn’t always the most important thing — often it’s about finding the most cost- and time-effective way to extricate the company from the problem.
Should law departments be viewed as cost centers, and what can firms do to help change that perception?
A legal department should never attempt to be a revenue center, but it serves a purpose where you can create a very good return on investment, where the calculation for the cost of capital, staff, and overhead can not only justify itself but be a value-add. It’s about improving the time to revenue for what you’re producing. Law firms have tools and technologies available to help clients manage, keep up with, and track what’s going on in cases, but they’re not implementing it fast enough.
What do the best law firms do consistently well that keeps them on your roster?
Our go-to firms 1) have come up with a smart staffing approach that’s cost-efficient, 2) have invested the time in knowing our company and learning its culture, and 3) are proactive in how they service our business. It’s great when law firms proactively share specific information that might be of concern to the company and its future.
If you could change one thing about the traditional law firm model, what would it be and why?
There still aren’t enough women and there still isn’t enough diversity across the board. When I put out RFPs, I mandate that the team presented be a diverse team and mandate that the people being identified in the proposal are actually the people who are going to show up and do the work. You have to hold the firms accountable.
Listen to our entire discussion with Nancy Saltzman here to gain more insights from the in-house world.
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